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QUITE WILD 
ANIMALS 

4 

BY 

BEATRICE CURTIS BROWN 









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“QUITE WILD ANIMALS” 




BY 

BEATRICE CURTIS BROWN / 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1923 

\ 



COPVRIOHT, 1923, 

Hy DODD, MEAD & COMPANT, Inc. 



PRINTED IN U. S. A. 



OCT 25 1923 Q_ 

©CU75958e-j^^V 


. TO 

ENID 



GROWP 



GROWP 


This is Growp. He is rather dangerous and can run 
faster than any one else when he is angry, which he often 

is, so most people keep away from him as much as pos¬ 
sible. 

If you look at the picture you will see that he has a 
beak and two wings, but otherwise he is quite an ordi¬ 
nary animal, so for a long time he did not know what to 
call himself, a beast or a bird. At last a friend said to 
him, “Why don’t you call yourself a birst?” So that 
is what he does now. 

Growp lives in a large wet and muddy held all alone. 
He has built himself a house out of old tins and broken 
saucers that people have thrown at him. It is a most 
ugly house and has no windows, but he thinks it is very 
beautiful and no one dares to contradict him. 

He has hardly any friends and those he does have do 
not come to see him very much, because he cannot taste 
anything, on account of his beak (no one with a beak can, 
you know, and that is why they eat queer things like 
worms), so he is very apt to eat his visitors. He says 
he is getting lonely but I don’t believe him. I think he 
means he is getting hungry. 

[3] 



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DOOLYBOO 



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DOOLYBOO 

Oh gaze on Doolyboo awhile, 

Observe her sweet and winning smile, 
Admire the way she lifts her feet. 

And see how clean she is, and neat. 

She’s always asked to tea or dine 
Because her manners are so fine; 

, Where’er she drinks from glass or cup 
She puts her little finger up: 

She’s always clean of paw and face 
And waves her tail in dainty grace. 

She never shouts or stamps her feet. 

She knows that would be indiscreet. 

But always laughs when jokes are made. 
And quite agrees with all that’s said. 

She is the best beloved of all. 

By each and every animal. 

They like to have her come to play 
They’re sorry when she goes away. 

Oh, let us all then try to be 
As sweet and rosy-cheeked as she. 

[7l 


1 




BAWGUM 



BAWGUM 


This is Bawgum. In spite of his fierce expression, 
he is perfectly safe and has the softest possible heart, 
but he likes to be thought terrifying and dangerous. 
Unfortunately nobody really believes he is after they 
have seen his tail which is most playful and undignified. 
However, it hurts his feelings to be told that he has a 
playful tail, so people generally pretend they don’t 
notice it. 

Bawgum talks a good deal because he thinks he has 
rather a fine voice, and the words he uses are so long 
that his friends always bring dictionaries when they 
come to tea with him. Some one said that he started a 
word one Sunday and was still saying it when they came 
to see him next Sunday, but I think this must be a joke. 

He is rather fat and the doctor has recently told him 
that he ought to eat nothing but tadpoles for at least 
three months, but after Bawgum had been eating tad¬ 
poles for three days there were no more left in the 
country, so now he has gone back to his usual diet. I 
believe the doctor has told him to try skipping every 
morning after breakfast (for he is really anxious to get 
thin, he thinks it would make him look more dignified). 


I am afraid he will find it rather difficult to skip, but he 
is going to try it for he has asked two friends to come 
and turn the skipping rope for him. 


[ 12 ] 


QUEEK 



QUEEK 


This is Queek. He is the laziest of all the animals 
and every year he is getting fatter and fatter, although 
his legs still remain weak and wobbly because he never 
uses them. 

Years ago, when he was young, Queek used to be 
quite active, and one day he built himself a house. It 
was in the hot weather on a specially hot day, so when 
he had finished it (all except the front door) he sat down 
on the flower-bed outside his dining-room window and 
leaned against the wall. He found it so comfortable 
sitting against the wall of his house in the sun that he 
simply could not find the energy to get up. He did not 
go to bed, neither did he get up for breakfast the next 
morning. In fact to make a long story short, he has 
been sitting there ever since. 

So he has never been inside his little house that he 
built so carefully that morning, and his cousin the 
Skutch cleans it out thoroughly every month and also 
comes round at mealtimes and passes out Queek’s food 
to him through the window. 

His only worry is the front door, which he feels ought 
to be put on because the dust blows in and makes the 

[15] 


hall carpet so dirty. However, every one else says they 
are much too busy to spend time on a house that no one 
lives in, and Queek seems to think that he will never do 
it, so he will probably go on worrying about it for a 
very long time. And I think it serves him right. 

It seems sad to think of him sitting there on the 
flower-bed all his life, but he says he is perfectly happy 
and comfortable, specially since his last birthday when 
the animals gave him a big umbrella to keep him dry in 
the wet weather. So perhaps we don’t need to pity him. 


I 


[i6] 


GORRIBLE 




GORRIBLE 


Gorrible is an extremely nice creature though not 
beautiful. He is always tired, for his feet each weigh 
about as much as an omnibus with three people inside, 
one on top, the driver and the conductor, and the con¬ 
ductor’s little “ting” thing altogether. So it is a terrible 
effort for him to walk. When he is asked out to tea 
he has to start several days beforehand and take a little 
tent to sleep in at nights while he is getting there, be¬ 
cause his progress is so slow. After every five steps 
(one with each foot and one jump) he has to sit down 
and rest. Also he suffers terribly from flies in the sum¬ 
mer. They will settle on the middle of his back, and he 
has been trying to switch them off with his tail for nearly 
thirty-seven years now. I don’t believe he will ever 
succeed. 

You would hardly think to look at him that he re¬ 
ceived a medal once for rescuing some one. It was like 
this. One day Doolyboo, who has a bad habit of not 
looking what her feet are doing, walked into a pond. 
She cannot swim and her cries for help were pitiful to 
hear. Now it just happened that Gorrible was on his 
way to a Garden Party at Queek’s and was camping near 

[19] 


the river so that he could have water with which to 
make his morning tea. He heard Doolyboo cry out and 
without waiting to put on his goloshes he rushed to the 
river. (When I say ‘"rushed” I mean he went as fast 
as he could, he took six steps and two jumps between 
each rest and got to the water’s edge in about ten min¬ 
utes). He plunged in and swam out to Doolyboo and 
said to her, “Catch hold of my tail—only don’t pull too 
hard—and breathe outwards.” Then he swam in and 
gave Doolyboo a nice hot drink and told her to look 
where she was going next time. Now Sloot says this 
wasn’t anything to make a fuss about because the water 
wasn’t deep anyway, and it is certainly true that Dooly¬ 
boo was only wet to the top of her ankles, but Sloot is 
a mean, cowardly animal, and I think it was a perfectly 
splendid act of bravery for Gorrible to perform. 


[20] 


THE BOLLA 



THE BOLLA 


This is Bolla. He has had rather a sad life. To be¬ 
gin with, years ago, he ate too much at a birthday party 
and was terribly ill for many months. When he was 
better, he took a vow that he would never eat rich food 
again, so now he feeds entirely on those light, airy 
feathers (one for breakfast, two for dinner, and one for 
tea) that you sometimes see floating about the room 
after the bed has been made up. So although he looks 
bulgy he is quite empty and perfectly resembles a bal¬ 
loon. This is a great trouble to him. He just cannot 
keep on the ground, but with the slightest puff of wind 
he is taken up and has to float till the breeze drops and 
he is allowed to alight gently on the ground probably 
miles from where he started. 

Many years ago, before the birthday party, when he 
was still a young and handsome animal, he fell in love 
with a beautiful young damsel-animal and the marriage 
was arranged to take place in the spring. This was the 
autumn and between the engagement and the wedding 
occurred the birthday party. So when the great day 
arrived, Bolla had become the light airy creature he is 
However his bride loved him so much she didn’t 

[23] 


now. 


mind. But poor Bolla! Just as the wedding march 
began, a breeze arose and he was borne aloft and wafted 
away, very far away indeed, because the breeze became a 
hurricane, and lasted for three days and he was set down 
in an entirely new country, and he has never been able to 
find his way back to his bride since. He is terribly miser¬ 
able about this, and has never smiled since that day, 
although he is very kind and still makes jokes in g, mel¬ 
ancholy way, so that his friends won’t feel depressed 
when they are with him. He has no fixed home, because 
he would not be able to settle down in one, but he carries 
a clean white paper-bag with him to sleep in in case he is 
wafted far away from any shelter and has to spend the 
night outdoors. 


[24] 


GOLOPHOS 




GOLOPHOS 


This is Golophos. He was meant to be a respectable 
size but his neck forgot to stop growing and by the time 
it had reached the end he felt he must have a head to 
suit it. So he does not quite fit himself. 

He is not very much liked by the rest of the animals 
because he is so proud and superior. He thinks that be¬ 
cause he can see over all their heads that he knows a 
great deal more than the rest of them. He always 
wears this supercilious expression. 

Now if he had chosen to be nice, he could have made 
a fortune by letting little animals slide down his neck 
at five cents a slide. Their parents would have been 
only too glad to give them a quarter to get them out of 
the way. But Golophos felt it would be beneath his 
dignity to let the little ones use him as a place of enter¬ 
tainment, so now he has to go without sugar because he 
has no money to buy it with. 

He lives in a beautiful house with electric lights and 
hot and cold water, but there are only three walls to it. 
This is because he is too big to get through a door so he 
had to have one wall taken down or he could not have 
not into the house at all. Of course this means that 

\v] 


every one can see what he is doing inside, but he does 
not mind that because he is sure that every one admires 
him so much. It is just like him to have a name like 
that. He says it is Greek but it isn’t. He won’t let 
people call him Phossy for short. 


1281 


SQUILLY-WIGGLE 



SQUILLY-WIGGLE 


The Squilly-wiggle has tried to make up for his lack 
of dignity by putting a hyphen in the middle of his 
name. The rest of the animals think it is very con¬ 
ceited of him and try to leave it out when they write 
him letters, but he has had it put on his calling cards, 
so there it is. 

He is worried always because he never knows quite 
where his legs are going to take him. He gives them 
directions every morning and they always start out for 
the right place, but often just as they arrive at the door 
of his destination, they turn round and go galloping off 
to somewhere entirely different. He tries hard to con¬ 
trol them but it is very difficult for him, for he is more 
leg than anything else, except perhaps neck, and that 
is rather a hindrance than a help because it makes his 
head so far off from his legs. His tail is entirely 
neutral and does not help either way. The result of 
all this is that he is very much aware if he should try 
and be too firm with his legs they might refuse to work 
altogether. They have threatened to do this. So he 
walks all day with his head turned round this way, back- 

[31] 


wards, so that his legs will not take him somewhere by 
surprise. They (the legs) are always indicating that 
they think he should buy a car, so that they would not 
have to do any more work. They cannot speak in words 
but they show this feeling by stopping and pointing at 
a car whenever they see one. This often makes it very 
difficult for Squilly when he is crossing the road in the 
crowded traffic, but they have no consideration for his 
feelings. 

Of course his friends say that he simply is not firm 
enough and that he has no will power, ‘‘Just look at 
his chin,” they say. But personally I sympathize with 
him and am going to get up a subscription to buy him 
a motorcycle. I do not know how he will fit himself on 
to one. Perhaps he can have a side car attached for 
his neck. 

He lives in a bath tub that has been turned upside 
down. He has it fitted up very comfortably with 
electric lights and cushions and he warms himself on the 
hot tap. 


[32] 


SLOOT 



SLOOT 


The Sloot, which is the name of this animal, is a 
really horrid creature. His mother, I should add, calls 
him Bertie. He is not supposed to get into this book at 
all, but as you can see if you look at the picture, it is 
very difficult to tell whether he is going or coming, and 
I made the mistake of thinking he was going, and he 
wasn’t at all. 

He is not even sincerely horrid like Growp so you 
cannot get any enjoyment out of him by throwing 
broken saucers at him and then seeing if you can get 
safely away, as you can with the other. He is shy and 
soft'spoken, in fact he has taken to speaking with a 
lisp of a peculiar kind because he thinks it makes him 
sound innocent. He is trying hard to get taken into 
society among the other animals and has learnt to play 
the harp in the hope that people will ask him to entertain 
their guests after dinner. 

These are some of his bad habits. He does not wash, 
he only pretends to, and sometimes just wets the parts 
that show; also he listens behind keyholes and reads other 
people’s letters, and he treads on old gentlemen’s toes for 

[35] 


spite, and then tries to look as if some one else had done 
it and says, ‘‘Really, how can people be so rude!” 

In fact he is no gentleman, and never will be. And 
just look at his tail. 


[36] 


BLUMPLEBY 



BLUMPLEBY 


This is Blumpleby. His friends call him Peewit be¬ 
cause it pleases him. He is very old, no one can re¬ 
member when he was young, it was so long ago. He is 
not a very pleasant person because he has no manners. 
He only says '‘Hey” when you speak to him, unless you 
are talking about meals when he becomes very inter¬ 
ested. His table manners are disgusting. Once he 
tried to eat peas with his fingers and got into a terrible 
mess because he had taken too much gravy on the same 
plate. If you look at his hands you will see he ought 
never to use them if he can use a fork instead, but he 
always does. 

Some one said he had not had a bath for three years, 
eight months and four days, but I hope this is not true. 

He lives in a mud hut which has only one room and 
no furniture. He used to have some chairs, but when¬ 
ever he sat on them the seats fell through, and the legs 
doubled up, so he has given up trying to sit on anything 
except the floor. 

He spends most of his time reading old newspapers 
which he eats when he has read. He believes that if he 

[39] 


eats enough he will soon know everything in the world. 
He has been eating them for years, however, and the 
only remark he ever makes is still “Hey,” so I don’t think 
his plan is very successful. 

I must tell you that he is very vain and all round the 
walls of his mud hut are hung pictures of himself when 
he was young—at least he says they are, but as some 
of them are quite handsome most people do not believe 
he is speaking the truth. 


[40] 



SKOONK 





SKOONK 


The Skoonk has a very sad story. To begin with he 
only eats sea-shells because he has a weak indigestion, 
and as a result he has become terribly thin. He is nearly 
always cold too. But what is worst is that he is hardly 
ever allowed to talk. Somehow the diet of sea-shells 
has made his voice shrill and squeaky, like the sound of 
a knife scraped on a plate. So whenever he starts to 
talk the rest of the animals say, as politely as they can 
but very quickly, “Oh, please stop!” And if he goes on 
they are apt to throw things at him. This is not be¬ 
cause they do not love him, for he is gentle and well-bred, 
but they just cannot bear his voice. So now he never 
talks, he writes hundreds of letters. His friends have 
given him a typewriter, and he sits in his house all day 
and writes to them, one after another. He tells them 
what the weather is like, and if the water was hot for his 
bath, and what he wants to have for his next birthday. 
Sometimes he gives a party and for these occasions he 
puts up a big blackboard in the drawing-room with 
“How DO YOU DO? I AM GLAD TO SEE YOU. HeLP 
YOURSELF TO TEA,” Written on it. Then he does not 


have to say a word but just smiles and shakes hands. 
Many people who can speak quite well have taken up the 
idea from him because they think it saves so much 
trouble. 

He lives in a little house of dark red brick with purple 
tiles which his friends built for him because they felt 
sorry for him. (It was one day after they had thrown 
a brick at him.) 

On the whole he doesn’t have a bad time really. He 
looks pathetic in the picture because it was taken on a 
day when the rest were all going to sing at a concert. 
Of course he was not allowed to, and he did want to 
so much. However he was allowed to sell programs 
and that made him feel happy again. 


[44J 


PUFFTUFFIN 



PUFFTUFFIN 


This is a truly kindly animal. He is all soft except 
for his head, his legs and his shirtfront, and people like 
to fall about on him when he is near because he is so 
soft and comfortable to land on. In the winter he earns 
his living as a sort of stove, people come and warm their 
hands on him when it is cold and they have lost their 
gloves. He only charges half-price to children. 

He was unfortunately born without any legs and for 
many years he tried to get about by rolling. But when 
it was wet his nice soft fuzz stuck to the pavement and 
got dirty, besides making it difficult for him to get along. 
So quite late in life he decided to grow some legs. He 
took some Ambulatory Pills after meals every day for 
three weeks and presently the legs began to appear. But 
when they had grown a few inches he thought he noticed 
something queer about them. As he was not accustomed 
to legs, he went around with them to a friend (it was to 
Skutch because he had taken some pills to grow arms 
and had succeeded very well). The friend looked at 
them and said, 

‘‘When did you take those pills 

[47] 


Pufftuffin said, “After meals every day.” 

‘'Oh dear, what have you done?” said the friend, 
“They ought to have been taken before meals. Now 
you will always be knock-kneed because they will grow 
out the wrong way.” 

And that is what happened. Pufftuffin tried taking 

all sorts of other pills, eating them frantically before 

meals, but it was too late. All he could do was to make 

his feet turn out the right way, and as they are the 

bottom of his legs, I hardly think it was an improvement. 

However, they are perfectly good for walking with even 
% 

on wet days. 


[48] 


SKUTCH 


>6 












SKUTCH 


This is usually called Skutch. He is hoping you will 
think him quite grown-up and that is why he is standing 
in such a peculiar attitude. I tried to persuade him to 
put both feet on the ground while he was being drawn 
because he kept falling about when he was standing this 
way, but he would not because he thought he looked more 
interesting this way. People meeting him for the first 
time might think he was conceited but he really isn’t— 
at least not much. He is always teased by his brothers 
because he is so tall and that has made him rather shy 
and silent. His great ambition is to be a coat-of-arms 
when he is grown up and he goes to a studio to practise 
for this every day. You will see he has two rather 
darling little hands in two pockets. Now none of the 
rest of his family have hands—they never have—but he 
thought they were rather smart things to have so he grew 
a pair and had some pockets made so that he could put 
them inside, like this. He can’t use his hands for any¬ 
thing except ornament. 

He feeds on self-filling fountain pens with the tops on 
and unsharpened pencils. He doesn’t like sharpened 

[51] 


ones because the points stick in his throat and if any¬ 
thing gets stuck in his throat there is no room for any-, 
thing to pass it. He has to be very careful about his 
diet. Once some one made him swallow a box of golf- 
balls for a joke. The lid of the box came off just as it 
got half-way down his neck, and all the balls came out 
at once. His appearance was completely altered for 
some days, and his throat has been rather sore ever since. 


[52] 


SPINICUM 



SPINICUM 


A long time ago the Spinicum had two tails. It was 
his chief claim to social distinction, which means that 
people invited him out to parties and teas simply be¬ 
cause he had two tails, and that started a cheerful con¬ 
versation when the guests were shy or the tea was late in 
coming up. He wore his tails on either side of him in¬ 
stead of at the back, and every Saturday he used to curl 
them with a hot toasting-fork so that he would look 
smart on Sunday. I do not know why he used a toast¬ 
ing-fork instead of ordinary curling irons, I think it was 
because he liked the peculiar wave that the fork produced. 

One day he was invited to a party and went up to his 
room to get ready and curl his tails. He could not find 
the fork anywhere. He ran up and down the house and 
looked in the cupboards and on the shelves and all the 
time the clock went on ticking till there were only five 
minutes left before the party began. Then he saw his 
nephew was in the garden digging potatoes with it. By 
the time he had got hold of it and had started to curl 
it was very late indeed. So he boldly cut off the right 
hand tail because he did not have time to curl it, and put 

[55] 


it on his dressing-table, expecting to sew it on when he 
came home. 

But he never saw his tail again. While he was gone 
his little nephew took it out to play “dressing up’’ with it. 
He was having a lovely time pretending he was his uncle, 
when a very noisy dog rushed up to him and ran away 
with the tail in his teeth. Little nephew was too 
frightened to run after the dog and it was never seen 
again. 

So ever since that day, Spinicum always walks look¬ 
ing at the pavement, hoping that the dog may have 
dropped the tail by now and that he will find it some¬ 
time lying in the dust. Meanwhile he has grown a 
beard, or has tried to, and hopes it will make up for the 
tail. But it doesn’t at all. 


[56] 


SHIMMYHONK 



SHIMMYHONK 


The Shimmyhonk is a lady as you can see by her smile 
and dainty steps. She is rather vain and thinks a good 
deal of her appearance. She is not very attractive, for 
one thing it is a matter of doubt whether she has any 
body. Spiteful people have been heard to say that 
where she isn’t neck she is leg, and vice versa, but I am 
glad to say that Shimmyhonk has never heard anybody 
say this for it would hurt her feelings. 

She gives music lessons to the younger animals on the 
piano and harp. In fact she is the only animal who 
knows how to play any instrument (except Sloot, who 
does not count), so she has to play for all the parades and 
concerts that are given. She likes playing at concerts 
because she has a most elegant bow that she is able to 
give on those occasions. 

Another thing she likes is having her photograph taken. 
She has one done every week in a different pose; playing 
the piano, playing the harp, playing both together, sit¬ 
ting in the garden with a basket of flowers round her 
neck, reading a book by the open window,,pouring tea 
out of her silver tea-pot. She also collects picture-post- 

[59] 


cards, and all the animals know her postcard album very 
well indeed, because she always gets it out to show to 
them when they come to tea, before they have been in 
the house five minutes, and the younger animals look at 
it while they are waiting for their music lessons. 

She is as yet a maiden lady, but it is said that Golophos 
is rather fond of her, and thinks that she alone of all the 
animals is genteel enough to be a good wife to him. 
However he has not said anything about the matter to 
her yet, and I doubt if he does for a long time, because, 
in spite of his pride, he is very poor and could not sup¬ 
port a wife. 


THE END 


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